Being Danny Tripp
by Novi T. Foxtrot
Summary: Reposted from the Other category... This is a sweet story attempting to fill in the gaps left by Sorkin in an effort to explain who Danny Tripp is and how he has gotten to where he is now.


**Title: Being Danny Trip.**

**Author: Novi T. Foxtrot - N123TF**

**Fandom: Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip**

**Parings: Danny/Jordan, Danny/OFC**

When Danny was a boy he worshiped the ground his father walked on, but as he grew up he became aware of the fights, the tense words, and then one day his father left. He walked out the door without a goodbye and broke Danny's heart. The little boy with the broken heart had no time for sorrow, no time to question why his daddy didn't love him. He had to become a man and the man of the house he became.

Normally Danny came home from school to an empty house, his mother worked long hours, but Danny was okay with it, because he was in junior high and he was the man of the house. But on this day, as he dismounted his bike, throwing it carelessly in the yard, a man stood on his porch. A man Danny hadn't seen in five years, but would never forget. "Hey Squirt," he yelled, "miss me?" It took everything within Danny's twelve year-old body not to run the rest of the way across the small yard and up the pealing white steps to throw his arms around the man. Instead he just stared. Finally he spoke, "I thought you left."

His father had gotten remarried, to a blonde bimbo half his age, who sat in the car putting on lipstick not aware of the scene unfolding outside the window. Danny's father would come in and out of his life, every time bringing a different woman than the one that he had left with. A promise of "I'll see you next time kid," thrown over his shoulder.

But that last time when Danny was eighteen, he had called back, "Don't bother, I won't be here." He wouldn't be because he would be going to Northwestern a college a half-day's drive north come fall. His mom said that he never did comeback. With tears of pride in her eyes, she adjusted his graduation cap before kissing his cheek one last time. That night Danny set off across the country to California, the land of sun and surf.

He met Jilly while he was working his first job at Paramount. She was kind, sweet, the have the homemade cookies ready for when the 2.2 kids come running through the white picket fence kind of girl. And Danny, whose heart had never mended from his dad leaving ten years before, thought he wanted those things too and proposed. They were Danny and Jillian.

Life was looking up, he was an assistant to an associate producer, learning the ropes and had a wonderful wife at home. They tried for kids, but Jillian never got pregnant and she blamed him for not giving her the life she so desperately wanted. She left and he blamed himself. Then his boss got fired and with him, Danny got canned.

Danny never wanted to be his father and there he was sitting alone on the couch, in an apartment that was too small for their dreams and too big for him alone. The loneliness pervaded the apartment and so instead of going home to it, he went to the clubs. He buried his sorrows in first alcohol and then overtime he was introduced to coke.

Danny felt at the bottom of the hole and alone. Then came Matt, two years younger and about twenty wiser, Matt pulled Danny out of the hole. Danny returned to regular work. In the world of television, no one knew who his old studio boss was, but they were starting to recognize the name Tripp.

Once again life was looking up. But Danny was learning to never count on life's luck lasting. NBS came down hard on a script, Matt's script to be exact, and like Matt had done for him, Danny stood beside him, catching him before he could fall down the hole. Together they were Matt and Danny. Danny knew some producers and Matt's name on the script translated to a deal with MGM.

Getting drunk in Vegas that night was probably a huge mistake, but they had been celebrating the wrap of their first film. And Danny who had been sleeping with the female lead of the film, was feeling like he was once again on top of the world. Matt who had been trying to keep an eye on Danny all night, lost sight of him when he got into the elevator.

The night is still a little hazy for Danny, but he knows that around three am after some really great sex, he proposed. Jules jumped at the offer and by four they were getting hitched at a 24 hour Weddings-R-Us chapel by an Elvis impersonator. Danny thinks that it was one of the worst mistakes of his life, though, letting Jilly walk out he reckons was worse.

Returning to the reality, or what there is of a Hollywood-based reality, Jules hated that she was no longer the center of his universe as he began work on his next film. He is not sure if he loves her, but he refuses to be his father. He was now married twice, his father had been three. So he tries to make it work, coming home early from a location scout trip to surprise her only to find her in his bed with another man.

But this time Matt is there and they throw themselves into work and together they create three films, two of which led the box office. But life was going too good, Danny reckoned because he got a call. It was Jilly's mom, Jilly was dead. A pile-up on I-5 and even though they hadn't been together for a decade and a half Danny feels more alone than ever. It isn't the fact that he did those lines of coke that pains him, but that he didn't tell Matt. He hid it from Matt and he will always hate himself for that.

But now Danny looks at his finger. He's has worn two other bands before and wasn't so keen on having to wear one again. But Jordan had insisted because her favorite line in a wedding ceremony is not 'I now pronounce you,' or 'you may now kiss the bride,' or even, 'I take this man,' but 'with this ring I thee wed.' If she wants him to wear a ring than he will, because he would do anything to make her happy. Even if it meant being like his father and being married three times. But that is where the similarities end, because he is the world to his little girl and he will never leave her and he will never leave his wife, because he knows that unlike his father he will never be three times divorced.


End file.
